Ambassador “Papa Doug” Manchester sets sail to the Bahamas

I’ll never forget the first time I met Doug Manchester. It was at some fancy societal gala (that was part of my beat in those days) sometime around 2007. The real estate developer, hotel magnate and staunch conservative Catholic was all smiles, making the rounds and shaking everybody’s hands.

A colleague introduced us and as I firmly shook his hand, I made what I thought was the requisite introduction.

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Manchester,” I said.

His face got visibly annoyed. I don’t remember exactly what Manchester said to me, but I do remember he almost scolded me for not calling him “Papa Doug.” All I could do was smile and apologize for the oversight. He rolled his eyes and quickly moved on.

While there’s something to be said for casualness (after all, we live in a city where people show up to the opera in board shorts), this exchange between myself and Manchester was hardly an isolated incident. My old editor had a similar encounter. I heard similar tales later when Manchester bought the San Diego Union-Tribune and briefly turned it into some kind of flag-waving Fox News spinoff. This wasn’t casual. This was someone with such a sense of self-importance that he automatically expected everyone to immediately know who he was and to immediately know to call him by his preferred title.

So it made sense that Manchester was an unapologetic, MAGA hat-wearing early supporter of the Handchurian candidate. Between Manchester and his, eh, Russian-born wife, they donated and/or raised nearly a million dollars for Trump’s campaign and Trump-friendly PACs. Considering this, it also makes sense that now President Trump would tap Manchester to be his Ambassador to the Bahamas. While literally thousands of crucial and high-level government jobs remain unfilled, Trump found the time to fill a job that’s more of a “thanks for all your support” reward than it is a political appointment.

So while most readers’ heads were probably exploding from the news about Trump’s military ban on trans people or the ever-escalating Russia investigation, they may have missed Manchester’s testimony at a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee hearing on his nomination last week. Most of it was par for the course, but what was most surprising was Manchester’s renouncement of his once vehement anti-gay-marriage stance.

“I want to clarify the issue that was a huge mistake, and I have more than done everything to rectify that mistake,” Manchester told the Senators, speaking on a $125,000 contribution he made to support Propostion 8, a 2008 ballot measure that made same-sex marriage illegal.

“I certainly support gay and lesbian marriage, for the record,” he added later.

Well then, credit where credit is due. Perhaps Manchester has evolved a bit since 2008. Perhaps it has something to do with the more progressive Pope Francis. Perhaps he just realized that it was bad for business, since he reportedly lost much more than $125,000 when the LGBTQ community boycotted his hotels.

It now seems likely that Manchester will be confirmed and on his way to the Bahamas, where he already owns a home in the posh Lyford Cay community on New Providence Island. And while I doubt Manchester would ever read a rag like ours, I would like to take this opportunity to challenge him to put his money where his mouth is. Actually, he might take that too literally. I challenge him to take full advantage of his ambassadorship to, even if it’s subtly, push a human rights-friendly agenda in the Bahamas, which, while temperate and lovely on the surface, has a troubled record when it comes to LGBTQ rights.

There have been plenty of ambassadors over the years who used their position to promote a more progressive agenda and while I doubt Manchester would ever use this opportunity to do so and, instead, use it as a paid vacation, his words in front of the Senate did seem heartfelt.

Most people hear the name “Papa Doug” and still think anti-gay. They remember the protests out of the Manchester Grand Hyatt. Now, he has the opportunity to change that. That’s how you earn a name like “Papa.”